


Erin Gilbert, This Is Your Ghost

by burglebezzlement



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Case Fic, Extra Treat, Friendship, Gen, Halloween, Haunting, Injury Recovery, Paranormal events, Rear Window elements, The Firehouse, ToT: Chocolate Box, ToT: Monster Mash, broken leg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-27 22:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8419804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: While Erin is recovering from a broken leg, she starts seeing a girl in the windows across the street -- a little girl who doesn't live there. A little girl who might not even be alive.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacehairdresser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehairdresser/gifts).



> This fic contains some references to backstory from Ghosts From Our Past (namely, the name and details of Erin’s childhood haunting, and Erin and Abby’s shared college addiction to The X-Files).
> 
> Happy Trick or Treat!

“Did you see the way the shredder cut through that ghost?” Holtz says. “It was like — BLAM JAZOW.” She leaps the rest of the way into the Ghostbusters’ living area, fighting with an imaginary ghost only she can see. 

“Fun day?” Erin says, looking up from the couch.

“Amazing day,” Holtz says. She drops down beside Erin and Erin tries not to wince at the dull pain in her leg. “Amazing. Three ghosts. We haven’t seen this much action since —”

“ _Holtz_ ,” Abby says, from the doorway.

“Uh, yeah,” Holtz says. “It was pretty OK, I guess.”

“You don’t have to stop talking about ghosts around me,” Erin says. She’s annoyed. They keep doing this. She’s got a broken leg, not a case of can’t-talk-about-ghosts-itis.

“It’s okay,” Abby says. She’s pulling off her coverall, which is spattered with ectoplasm. Erin can smell it from the doorway, the peculiar tang of the spirit world. “You’re going to be up again in no time.”

* * *

There’s a rhythm to getting better — a timetable of pills that Erin takes, and then the stretches that the PT told her she’s not supposed to start yet, only Erin’s always been an overachiever, even when people are telling her it’s time to sit back and relax. Maybe especially then. 

Around Erin’s days of pills and take-out meals and half-hearted assistance from Kevin, the rest of the Ghostbusters run on their own unpredictable schedule. One morning they’re up at 4 AM to fight a ghost in the flower district. The next day they sleep in, and then Holtz manages to blow up a capacitor filled with a thick, oily substance that Erin does _not_ want to see the Safety Data Sheet for. Abby and Patty help Erin down the stairs, carefully, and they bring her around the corner to all-night diner, where Erin slumps in a booth across from Patty until Abby and Holtz manage to get the worst of the smoke out of the living areas.

Erin’s cut loose from the team’s rhythms, from Patty’s research and Holtz’s experiments and Abby’s theory, from the random scramble when they get a report of a ghost and go blaring off into the city.

* * *

Erin spends the first few days of her recuperation on the couch, watching the enormous TV Abby bought for research reasons (and X-Files marathons, a purpose Erin thoroughly approves of). She’s fuddled by the pain pills at first, but then she gets to bump down from the hard stuff to regular pain meds, and she starts getting bored.

So _bored_. Abby keeps bringing Erin research, and Holtz gives demonstrations of her latest ghost-busting inventions, and Patty brings her books on the history of New York City, but they keep heading out to bust ghosts, and then it’s just Erin. (And sometimes Kevin, but his idea of useful entertainment for someone stuck on the couch consists of getting her to read lines with him for one of his auditions.)

She starts hopping around the room carefully on her crutches. There’s a crappy Poang chair that came from her old apartment, and she gets Kevin to drag it over to the window with the matching footstool.

It’s autumn, and it’s cold enough out that she can’t really open the window, but she can still watch the street, watch the leaves falling from the trees. Look at the sky and the people rushing back and forth from appointments and work and all the places Erin isn’t going right now.

* * *

Erin’s not sure which of them notices the other one first, her or the little girl in the apartment across the alley. 

The girl looks about the age Erin was when she first saw the ghost of her dead next-door neighbor, Gretta DeMille. Maybe nine or ten. She’s got her hair pulled into two tight braids, and she’s wearing an old-fashioned jumper.

She also looks bored. Like Erin. She’s staring out the window down at the street when Erin first sees her.

Erin studies her for a few minutes. When the girl looks over, Erin waves.

The girl looks startled, and then gets up from the window. She stares at Erin for a moment, and then disappears into the dark of the apartment.

* * *

The next time Erin sees the girl, she doesn’t run away. Instead, she smiles back at Erin, shyly, and then giggles when Erin makes a face at her.

Over the next few days, they start waving and making funny faces at one another. The windows are close enough together that Erin can breathe on the glass of her window to fog it up and draw a tic-tac-toe outline with her finger. The girl smiles, and follows her, and they have an epic tic-tac-toe battle across the alleyway.

* * *

A few weeks after her accident, Erin goes back to the doctor. 

Patty borrows her uncle’s hearse to drive Erin to her appointment. It’s the old one, because he says he’s not letting Patty ever take the new hearse they bought him with the grant money from the city to replace the one that went into the vortex.

Pulling up to the hospital in a hearse probably isn’t how you’re supposed to arrive, but Erin doesn’t care. She’s got Abby and Patty and Holtz with her.

The checkup goes well, and they replace her cast with a walking cast that lets her limp around a little better, with one crutch for balance. 

“I am going _everywhere_ ,” Erin says, and she makes Patty drive them to a bookstore. She goes nuts in the paranormal exploration section. She’s just so happy to get _out_. 

“Coloring?” Holtz leans over her shoulder to look at a Harry Potter coloring book Erin’s grabbed from one of the display tables. “Going back to your roots. I approve.”

“It’s for the little girl across the alley,” Erin explains. She grabs a pack of colored pencils and then limps over to the magazines. 

Erin originally had grand plans of an actual dinner out, but the throbbing pain in her leg comes back, and Abby notices the way Erin’s walking. She grabs everything Erin’s holding and throws the Ghostbusters’ corporate credit card down. “It’s for work,” she says, when Erin looks at her, and pays for everything, even the coloring book and colored pencils and the last month’s issue of Academic Dressing Monthly (“It’s September and It’s Back To Tweed”). She drags Erin out of the bookstore, and Patty drives them all back to the fire station for a takeout dinner, and, for Erin, an early night.

* * *

The next morning, Erin wakes up and hops over to the kitchen to make her own tea and English muffin. It’s amazing how much better tea tastes when it isn’t Kevin making it.

 The rest of the Ghostbusters are off in Brooklyn, looking into a haunting at an artisan pickle boutique. But Erin’s got other plans. Grand plans. Today’s the day she makes it out of the fire station, all on her own.

She grabs the coloring book and the colored pencils and throws them into a bag, which she slings over her shoulder. With the crutch, she hops her way out of the fire station, leaving Kevin behind.

The building across the alleyway is one of those indeterminate apartment buildings you see in NYC, and Erin’s not sure how old it is. Pre-war, probably, but which war? Patty would know, she thinks, as she studies the buzzers for the apartments and tries to figure out which apartment the girl she’s been watching lives in.

She can’t figure out which apartment she’s looking for, but a menu delivery guy joins her in the entry and buzzes half the apartments before getting let in. Erin feels like she should tell him not to, but then, she’s not supposed to be here either, so she just follows him in through the open door. 

Once she’s inside, Erin takes the elevator to the third floor. The girl lives in the apartment at the corner, so she figures it’s going to be the last door on that side. It has to be.

There’s no noise inside when Erin knocks, which is weird. Usually the girl is awake by now. Erin’s not sure why the girl’s at home, instead of at school — if she’s honest, that’s one of the reasons she’s here today. She wants to know.

Still no answer. Erin knocks again, and finally, a man in his twenties with sleep-tousled hair opens the door. 

“Yeah, what is it?” he asks.

Erin’s wondering if she has the right apartment, but when she looks past him, into the living room, she can see the fire station. Can see her own window. 

“I’m from next door,” Erin says, looking back at the man. “I brought over a coloring book for your little girl. Uh. I hope that was okay? I couldn’t tell if she was sick or — ” 

She trails off, because the guy is looking at her like she has two heads. 

“What little girl?”

“The one who lives here,” Erin says. “Sits in the window? Isn’t in school for some reason?”

The guy’s still staring at her. “There’s no little girl here,” he says.

“But — ” 

Erin looks past him again. It’s the right window. But the apartment’s clearly not the right place. There’s a broken-down futon with a stained cover in the corner, and there’s a bunch of empty beer bottles scattered over an IKEA table. No toys. No books. There’s zero evidence of a kid anywhere. 

Which means — 

“Sorry to have bothered you,” Erin says. She tucks the coloring book back into her bag and starts hopping back down the hallway.

* * *

Erin spends the next two days staking out the window, professional-style, just like Mulder and Scully. She’s got her coffee and her binoculars and a little notebook, for keeping notes. She even gets Kevin to bring her some sunflower seeds from the bodega down the street, but apparently there’s not much call for sunflower seeds in Manhattan, because they’re rancid and weird. Or maybe Fox Mulder just had terrible taste in stakeout food. 

The girl doesn’t show up.

* * *

“So,” Abby says, a few evenings later. “You wanna tell us about it?”

Erin looks up from the window. “What?”

Patty pulls a chair over. “Why you’ve gone full Rear Window,” she says.

“Oh.” Erin glances back over at the window. Still empty, and dark, and the girl never showed up after dark before, but — “I think there’s a ghost next door.”

Erin’s not sure why she didn’t tell them before. Maybe she was hoping there was another explanation. Maybe she was waiting for the girl — the ghost? — to show up again. But now that Abby’s asked, the whole story comes out. 

“Sweet,” Holtz says, once Erin’s told them everything. “I’ve got a new prototype for my ghost shredder. Let’s go check it out.”

“You’re not _shredding her_ ,” Erin says, leaning forward in her chair. “She’s nice! She’s been keeping me company! I just….”

“You’re just not sure if she’s alive or not,” Abby says, and Erin nods miserably. “Well. We can figure this out.”

Abby makes Holtz leave all the ghost-shredding, ghost-busting, and ghost-Erin-doesn’t-want-to-know equipment behind when they head over to the building next door. They’ve got Abby’s PKE meter, and that’s it.

Abby starts taking readings in the hallway while they wait for the elevator to come. The PKE meter stays quiet.

Upstairs, the same guy answers the door. 

“Ghostbusters,” Holtz says, in a clipped, official tone. “Your residence may be the site of a Class III ectoplasmic manifestation. We require urgent access under City Code 18C dash one-eighteen.”

“Oh!” He steps back. “What?”

Holtz is already pushing past him, PKE meter in hand, to go stand by the window.

“There is no City Code 18C dash one-eighteen,” Erin whispers.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know that,” Holtz says, as they watch the PKE meter.

It’s dark. Stubbornly, silently dark. Even when Holtz scans the rest of the apartment. Even when she scans the apartments next door and the apartments on the floors above and below. Nobody they talk to has ever seen a girl in any of the apartments, and nobody’s heard anything about a haunting in the building.

And based on the PKE meter, there’s no sign of a ghost.

* * *

Erin’s staring out the window a few days later when Patty brings in dinner. Takeout again, from the Italian place down the street this time. 

“Why so gloomy?” Patty asks, as she sets the food down next to Erin.

“I swear I saw that girl,” Erin says. She glares at the window across the alleyway, and then shakes her head. “She was there, Patty.”

“I believe you,” Patty says.

“Thanks.” Erin knows all the Ghostbusters believe her, even Kevin (even though she’s not entirely sure Kevin knows what it is he’s believing in). But the girl she saw still nags at her, like the dull ache in her leg that hasn’t quite gone away.

Who is the girl? Why was she there? Why did Erin see her? Gretta DeMille haunted her for a solid year, but at least with Gretta, she knew the story. She knew who Gretta was.

“It’s still bugging me,” she says, picking up the takeout container. 

Patty nodded. “Right. You need to get away from that window.” She studies Erin for a moment. “We tried looking into this the Abby and Holtzy way. You want to look into it the Patty way?”

* * *

The Patty way involves a lot of research.

First, Patty walks Erin through everything she can remember about the girl: hairstyle, clothing, every little detail. Thanks to reading Academic Dressing Monthly, Erin can tell Patty the girl’s dress had a Peter Pan collar. Patty runs Erin through what feels like a hundred questions about the window — was the girl sitting in the same window, or could it have been offset from the current window, maybe in an earlier structure? Did Erin ever see anything behind the girl?

After that, they start online. There’s deed records and New York City assessment records, which tell them that the apartment building next door was built in the late 1800s.

“Narrows it down a bit,” Patty says. She moves them on to Census records next, but there’s nothing available yet from the era they think the girl might come from. 

Patty drags Erin out of the fire station after that. “We’ve got to go in person for the stuff at the Hall of Records,” she says. “You want to find out, don’t you?”

Erin suspects this was a plan to get her out of the fire station. But if it means finding out what happened… Patty helps her tape a trash bag over her cast so she can shower, and then they’re heading out to the Hall of Records.

It’s a long day in the records before they’ve confirmed it. No little girl has died in the building across the alleyway, at least not in the era they’re looking in.

“So it’s not a ghost,” Erin says, once they’ve finished looking through the death certificates and cross-referencing everything. She’s disappointed. It’s not like she expected an answer, but she was hoping. 

“Don’t give up,” Patty says, mysteriously. She smiles at Erin, and then goes back to copying down names from a truancy report from the 1950s.

* * *

It’s Halloween, and Erin’s downstairs, sitting in a rolling chair to hand out candy to the kids who just keep coming. Apparently the Ghostbusters are the hot new trick-or-treating destination. 

Abby and Holtz are out, checking out a potential haunting in Central Park. Patty’s out finishing up some research — she’s been mysterious about what exactly she’s looking into. So Erin’s the only one here to admire all the little kids, dressed up like superheroes and princesses and cartoon characters and witches and wizards and turtles. 

And even like Ghostbusters. There’s a few of them out there, dressed up in little coveralls, with plastic ghost fighting equipment strapped to their backs. Erin’s already had to send Kevin out for more candy twice, but she’s still giving extra candy to the little kids who are dressed up like the Ghostbusters. 

Erin’s looking around at her dwindling bags of candy, wondering if she can send Kevin out a third time, when Patty arrives. She’s got a woman with her, maybe in her sixties, who looks up at the fire station with an expression of wonder on her face.

When the woman looks at Erin, her eyes go wide. “It’s you!”

“I, uh — ” Erin looks over at Patty, who’s grinning. “It is?”

“Erin Gilbert, this is your ghost,” Patty says, gesturing towards the woman.

“My what?” Erin looks at the woman. She’s got a friendly face, and her hair’s a loose mass of graying curls. And she’s a living human being, not a ghost at all.

“It’s you,” the woman says, looking at Erin in wonderment. “The ghost lady from the fire station. My brother thought I made you up!”

“I’m sorry,” Erin says, handing out candy to a firefighter and a princess. “I don’t understand.”

“I started wondering,” Patty says. She pulls up a couple chairs. “When we didn’t find any PKE readings over there — what if that was because it wasn’t a ghost? What if it was something else?” She shrugs. “That’s how I tracked down Janet here. Janet Patterson, only she used to be Janet Smith, so it took a while.”

“I used to see you,” Janet says. “Way back. I had a bad case of the measles one year, and my mother kept me home while I got better. I’d sit and watch people from the window, and then one day I saw you, looking back at me.” She smiles at Erin. “After I got better, I went over to the fire station to ask the firemen who you were, but they told me there weren’t any women in their fire station.”

“So — so you remember me?” Erin says.

“All my life. Only I just figured you were a figment of my imagination.”

Erin looks over at Patty. “But — how?”

“Slip in time,” Patty says. “You both were recovering from something, you both needed company. Somehow, the two of you connected, even though you were at different points in time.” She shrugs. “I’ve come across other documented cases.”

Erin starts thinking about the physics behind that, behind even just photons connecting across a time gap, and feels dizzy. If that’s possible — if there’s other ways for spirits to come across the veil — “It’s astonishing,” she says.

Janet smiles. “It’s good to meet you,” she says. “After all these years.”

Erin gets up, unsteady on her leg, and hops over to hug Janet. “It’s good to meet you again, too.”

Patty gets them another bowl of candy, and Janet joins them while they pass out candy to the hoards of kids coming to the fire station. She’s got stories about the neighborhood — about the fire fighters who used to live in the fire station, and about a haunting down the street that Patty hasn’t heard anything about. 

It’s Halloween night, and for the first time, Erin’s glad that her haunting turned out to be something other than a ghost.


End file.
